This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

Joseph Calleja: Tenor up for a challenge

Joseph Calleja scored a breakthrough performance at the Metropolitan Opera in December 2009 in the Tales of Hoffman, co-starring with soprano Anna Netrebko. (KEN HOWARD / METROPOLITAN OPERA)

By John TeraudsMusic Critic

Wed., Nov. 17, 2010

Maltese tenor Joseph Calleja is hot. At age 32, he has already become a regular headliner at the Metropolitan Opera and other storied opera houses around the world.

He isn’t about to slip into costume for the Canadian Opera Company anytime soon, but he is making his Toronto debut on Friday night, in the second of this season’s International Vocal Recitals at Roy Thomson Hall.

For this concert, he is singing a richly operatic, 19th-century program drawn from Italian and French opera. Expect a tenor hit parade of arias from the operas of Verdi (like, “Questa, o quella” from Rigoletto), Puccini (two favourites from Tosca: “Recondita armonia” and “E lucevan le stelle”), as well as Canadian tenor Ben Heppner’s old standards: “Ah, leve toi soleil,” from Roméo et Juliette by Charles Gounod and “O souverain” from Jules Massenet’s Le Cid.

It’s rare for a singer to try out a new accompanist at such a big venue, but the tenor is confident. “I have heard such great things about him from other singers I respect,” he says. Besides, he likes the idea of challenging himself.

Article Continued Below

“When you work with other talented people, you learn more,” Calleja explains. “At my age, I’m still very much learning things.”

The tenor had a head start on other learners, because he began with a fine voice and what appears like a natural stage presence.

Now that he has appeared on live, high-definition broadcasts produced by the Met as well as the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in London, Calleja is discovering just how appealing people find opera at a movie theatre.

“I was just in Houston doing a production of Madama Butterfly, and people were coming up to me saying, ‘Oh I saw you in the Met broadcast,’ ” he relates.

“It’s very nice, but it adds a lot of responsibility to the singer,” says Calleja, who was very conscious last December of performing a Met matinee of Jacques Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffman alongside superstar Russian soprano Anna Netrebko not only for the 3,400 patrons in front on the stage, but for tens of thousands of people around the world.

“That was quite something,” he says. “It’s great to keep people interested in opera by presenting it this way. The detail and the kind of nearness you can experience with a camera zooming in is bringing in a new audience and it is probably getting a lot of younger people interested in opera.

“I hope that by going to see opera at the cinema, these people may eventually want to see opera in the way it was meant to be experienced, in the theatre.”

Asked whether a singer has to adjust makeup or act differently on a stage surrounded by high-definition cameras, Calleja replies that every singer’s main responsibility is to the people in the opera house. “There is an unwritten law that this is our first priority.”

Although a full opera calendar means he doesn’t have much time for solo recitals, the tenor says he loves them. “You get to showcase more than just one role and one genre. The audience gets to see you wearing different pants,” he laughs.

Calleja also likes the directness of the recital experience, where there are no costumes to fuss with, cues to watch out for or makeup to smudge.

“Singing is the expression of what is in one’s soul,” he declares. “When I’m happy, I want to sing.”

And with a career in full flight, Joseph Calleja is a very happy man right now.

The Toronto Star and thestar.com, each property of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, One Yonge Street, 4th Floor, Toronto, ON, M5E 1E6. You can unsubscribe at any time. Please contact us or see our privacy policy for more information.

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com